The best way to become an outstanding financial services leader is through proper training and experience, but that’s not always available for everyone. Some leaders, such as Joyce Chan, figure things out as they go. Fortunately, she’s proven herself to be a quick study. 

Chan joined the financial services profession in 2018 as a mid-career switcher. Her previous role was that of a commissioned police officer with the Singapore Police Force that was “my childhood dream come true,” she said.  

“I learned a lot, but every time we responded to a situation, there wasn’t much to prevent. The Police only respond after everything already happened. Something that bothered me a great deal was the number of suicide cases that I responded to. In some suicide notes, people cited money problems and the inability to overcome illnesses like cancer. I felt absolutely helpless. I joined the police to help people, and I started wondering to what extent I was really doing that.” 

The choice to pivot to financial services wasn’t obvious, both because Chan couldn’t envision herself as someone that could excel at client service, and because there is still a stigma attached to the profession in Singapore. Eventually, though, she realized that the goal of financial services – ensuring that people were protected – was the same as what she wanted to accomplish as a police officer.  

Understanding that link proved to be her first lesson in leadership, and she would soon use the messaging to attract her first recruit.  

Here are five other areas of focus that have helped Chan succeed as an agency leader: 

1. Showing the possibilities of a career in financial services 

Chan proved to be a successful advisor, and though she wasn’t intentionally looking to rise to a leadership position at first, people began to gravitate toward her. 

“I was really excited about the profession, the possibilities it brought and the impact it can drive. I started sharing that excitement with others,” she said. “Somehow, my team started to form, and I started paying more attention to recruiting people.” 

Her first recruit was her brother, who had a background in banking but was jaded by the reality of working in that profession. Chan was able to convince him that, like her, financial services was a more satisfying way to obtain the professional outcomes he was chasing. In his case, he wanted to serve as a financial consultant to his friends and small-business owners. 

“He realized that this profession sounded like something he wanted to do,” she said. “He had been helping small and medium enterprises look at their finances. He knew some of his skills would translate.” 

2. Juggling interpersonal dynamics 

Chan’s leadership was tested as a few more teammates came aboard. She encountered the problems associated with managing a diverse group of personalities, and the differing attitudes of advisors in different stages of life. 

“On my team, we have a working mother, a dad-to-be, and, on the other side of the spectrum, a fresh college graduate with no prior working experience,” she said. “How do you bridge the two? That is my biggest challenge.” 

So far, she's found that emphasizing effective time management and self-discipline is key to managing a team with different demographics. By treating everyone the same in that aspect, Chan sets a high standard while still allowing advisors to have individual work preferences.

Though Chan now says she has a better idea of the next batch of advisors she’d be looking to recruit – people in their early 30s with prior work experience and still willing to adapt to new systems – she said she still values having generational diversity on her team. She’s particularly quick to emphasize recruiting young, inexperienced graduates, even though it means more training on her part, because she believes that dynamic will be a magnet for new advisors in the way older team members are not.  

3. Delegating 

Just as Chan stresses time management with the rest of her team, she’s come to prioritize it for herself. She’s found a good cadence for advising her team members and managing the office. She meets with each team member once per week and has structured the meetings to touch on five main areas: training, mentoring, coaching, case preparations and case studies.

She’s also learned that she doesn’t have to do everything herself. Rather, she can delegate most of the non-strategic work to her admin staff and request for senior advisors to lead some training and discussions, preferably ones eyeing their own leadership positions. Not only does this help the team learn from different perspectives, it also hones the knowledge and skills of senior advisors in line with the saying, “When you teach, you learn twice.” 

4. Celebrating success 

One facet of leadership that has come easily to Chan: genuinely caring about the performance of her advisors and celebrating the wins they obtain as if they were her own.  

“I love coaching and mentoring my team members to help them achieve their goals, the levels of success they define for themselves,” she said. “Being a leader is about being that balcony person and letting your team know that you truly believe in them. Because of this strong belief, you can truly empower them and see them succeed. That is really one of the best feelings.”  

5. Aspiring to continually grow 

Like any well-trained leader, Chan has learned to look ahead. She has begun working toward long-term goals she identified, the most immediate of which is to turn her current crop of financial consultants into the first generation of leaders with their own teams.  

“These are the first generation of the team’s financial consultants, and there’ll come a point in time in which they become senior financial consultants and then start venturing into team management,” she said. “At that point, my time will be a lot easier to manage because they then will train their respective teams, and we will all come together to strategize and adapt to new changes. Before that happens, as the founder and leader of the team, this is the grind period that I have to go through. But ultimately, if I do this well and provide a strong structure to future leaders of the team, then it’d be much easier for the next generation of leaders to scale and replicate, and bring the team forward to the next level of success.”

Contact: Joyce Chan, joycechanan@pruadviser.com.sg